Imagine

by Michael Baye, Bert Elwert Professor of Business at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, and former Director of the Bureau of Economics, FTC

Imagine a world where competition and consumer protection authorities base their final decisions on scientific evidence of potential harm. Imagine a world where well-intentioned policymakers do not use “possibility theorems” to rationalize decisions that are, in reality, based on idiosyncratic biases or beliefs. Imagine a world where “harm” is measured using a scientific yardstick that accounts for the economic benefits and costs of attempting to remedy potentially harmful business practices.

Many economists—conservatives and liberals alike—have the luxury of pondering this world in the safe confines of ivory towers; they publish in journals read by a like-minded audience that also relies on the scientific method.

Congratulations and thanks, Josh, for superbly articulating these messages in the more relevant—but more hostile—world outside of the ivory tower.

To those of you who might disagree with a few (or all) of Josh’s decisions, I challenge you to examine honestly whether your views on a particular matter are based on objective (scientific) evidence, or on your personal, subjective beliefs. Evidence-based policymaking can be discomforting: It sometimes induces those with philosophical biases in favor of intervention to make laissez-faire decisions, and it sometimes induces people with a bias for non-intervention to make decisions to intervene.

Related Resources

The shift in oversight responsibility from parents to the FTC will likely lead to less-effective oversight, more difficult user interfaces, less children’s programming, and higher costs for everyone — all without obviously mitigating any harm in the first place.

TOTM: The following is the eighth in a series of posts by TOTM guests and authors on the FTC v. Qualcomm case recently decided by Judge Lucy Koh in the Northern District of California. The blog post is based on a forthcoming paper regarding patent holdup, co-authored by Dirk Auer and Julian Morris.